Last year, Bethesda VP of PR and marketing Pete Hines called Dishonored a “new franchise,” noting at the time that it was “far exceeding our sales expectations.” In an interview at E3, IGN asked Hines if Bethesda still sees a future in the series, plus how big of a priority it is for the publisher moving forward.

“In general, we try not to wade into anything as a one-off in the first place,” Hines told IGN, “so yeah, for sure. The success of that game and how proud Arkane is of it and what goes on at any studio when they put out something like that and all the ideas that are coming out, certainly it’s something that we feel is a franchise.”

“It’s specific to Arkane,” Hines continued. “What we do or don’t do on Dishonored has zero effect on Id, Tango, Machine Games. Each one, in some respects, kind of acts in a silo. It doesn’t really matter what those guys are making. ‘What are you good at? What are you going to work on next? What are you going to do next? Okay, that’s what we’re going to do.’ It’s as simple as that.”

With the mention of Id, we asked Hines about recent reports that Rage 2 has been canceled and whether that franchise still has a potential future.

“To be determined,” Hines said. “We’ll see. Right now, [Id’s] focus is on their current project. They are full bore on that. What I’ve seen of it recently, I’m super happy about it. We want them to stick to that until we’re ready to talk about what that is. But let’s wait until we get there first.”